


The Wind Will Not Subside

by shrift



Series: Yuletide Fanworks [5]
Category: Samurai Champloo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Character of Color, Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2005
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrift/pseuds/shrift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Absence cools moderate passions, and inflames violent ones; just as the wind blows out candles, but kindles fires."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wind Will Not Subside

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the entire series. Beta thanks go to Shanola and Shay. Summary attributed to François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Moral Maxims and Reflections, no. 276 (1665-1678), trans. London (1706).
> 
> Written for Eternal Angel in the Yuletide Treasures 2005 challenge.

Seven days after Jin and Mugen nearly died in front of her, they woke up hungry, sprawled on the floor of her father's house. They looked much worse than they had when Fuu had found them in jail so long ago with the crap beaten out of them by the Daikan's lackeys. She'd hardly known them then, and Fuu was much happier to find them alive this time. Fuu fed them and thought that she wanted today to last forever and ever, even though Jin and Mugen fell asleep on her an hour later.

Mugen, of course, ruined her happiness just by being Mugen.

"Good morning!" she called on the eighth day, but when she only saw one body, Fuu dropped two bowls of kayu on the floor. It splattered all over her feet. "M-Mugen?"

Jin sat up, his kimono rustling. "He left in the night."

For a moment, his words meant nothing, and then it hit her like an ocean wave of pure fury.

"That jackass!" Fuu shouted, growling and curling her hands into fists. "What the hell does he think he's doing? His arm is broken! He can barely walk!"

Eight days ago, she had scrambled down to the beach and found him alive. Full of jagged holes, but alive, his blood staining his clothes and the sand beneath his body. Fuu hadn't cried when her father died, but she cried when Mugen didn't. Mugen had nearly died so many times already during their journey; it wasn't fair to make her worry like that.

Jin leaned forward, reaching out carefully to spare the wounds in his side. He picked up a coin from the floor. "Heads," he said. "Hm. He really is an idiot." With his glasses lost at sea, the edges of his face were softer now, like an icicle melting.

Fuu ground her teeth. "Keeping track of Mugen is like trying to catch an eel!"

"Ah," Jin said, and dropped the coin to the floor. It clattered and rolled to bump against Fuu's toe. Jin's eyes went distant, and it felt like he was leaving her, too.

A promise was a promise, but she had no promise to hold them to her now. She hadn't expected them to stay.

Expectation and hope were different things.

"Fine. See if I care! I don't need him," Fuu said, stomping her foot. Mugen was the reason her socks were soaked in soggy rice, after all; his breakfast had landed on her toes. "The stupid idiot."

Jin said nothing. He didn't seem surprised at all that Mugen had left. But then, deep down, neither was Fuu. They both knew that Mugen wasn't Mugen unless he was moving.

* * *

They remained in her father's house until Fuu decided that Jin was well enough to travel, and then together they left the island for Nagasaki. There was no reason to stay on Ikitsuki with her father gone, not to mention how all of the islanders looked at her funny, the same way they'd look at an old man who smelled bad and made no sense when he talked.

Good riddance, as far as Fuu was concerned. Jin didn't seem to care either way.

Fuu found work in a tea shop. She liked food and food liked her, and Jin liked the food she brought home at the end of the day as part of her wages. The customers still sucked, but her luck held out and none of them went crazy and set the building on fire like a couple of bodyguards she knew.

Most nights she never knew that Jin had entered their rented room until he made a noise; tonight it was the jingle of coins as he tossed a small purse over her shoulder. It landed on her lap. Fuu eyed him carefully as she handed him dinner. Every day, Jin left and brought back money, and she never asked where he earned it. It was stupid, she knew, because it was always Mugen who had done the stealing and the gambling when they were together, not Jin.

Well, maybe _all_ of them had done a little gambling, but they were really hungry back then!

It was nice not being hungry anymore. Other things were less nice, but Fuu tried not to think about them.

"A really weird guy came into the shop today," Fuu told Jin as he ate. "He had little beetle eyes, and he was making the creepiest face. All he ordered was water! Can you believe it?"

"Ah," Jin said.

"Okay, so maybe he was poor," Fuu admitted, recalling the guy's grubby kimono. "But I think he was casing the joint so he could rob it later tonight!"

He paused to look at her, an udon noodle halfway to his mouth. Broth went split-splat onto his hakama.

"Or not," Fuu said. Sheesh! Jin had no sense of imagination.

Jin put down his bowl and began sharpening his swords. Fuu drew up her knees and looked out the window. The rhythmic scrape-scrape-scrape pulled at her eyelids, even though it was too early for sleep. There was a chirping noise in her ear, and Fuu petted Momo absently, a swishing tail tickling her cheek.

She didn't mind Jin's silence as much now, but sometimes Fuu wished for something noisy.

* * *

Fuu went to work, and Jin went to wherever he went, and they did that for a while. Weeks, maybe months -- Fuu didn't keep track, the same way she deliberately didn't turn and stare every time a man wearing a red kimono walked into the tea shop. Mugen wasn't looking for her, so why should she bother?

But if Mugen was the last person she expected to see coming through the door, there was someone else she didn't expect to see almost as much.

"So handsome," Tani twittered, her cheeks flushed as though she'd been sneaking sake on the sly again.

Fuu hefted her tray. "Huh?"

Tani was married to Yasuo, who owned the tea shop; she ran the kitchen and made Fuu's life interesting, if occasionally difficult. Not _very_ difficult; Fuu was used to getting kidnapped and imprisoned on a regular basis, after all! Not that anything like that had been happening lately.

"The new customer!" Tani answered, clasping her hands under her chin. "Oh, he's such a pretty young man."

Because she might be moping but she wasn't dead, Fuu poked her head out of the kitchen, and said, "Jin?!"

Jin looked up from the cup of tea in his hands. "Fuu."

"What are you doing here?" Fuu asked, wandering out of the kitchen and leaving the serving tray behind in her confusion.

"A merchant has asked me to escort him to a nearby village."

Fuu blinked. "So?"

"I'll be gone for a week. Maybe two," Jin said.

"Oh," she said, her shoulders slumping. "Why are you telling me this?"

Jin just tilted his head, and Fuu realized that, in his own weird way, he was asking permission to go. She thought about how much she'd miss having someone to talk to at night, and then she thought about how much Jin actually talked and how she needed a new kimono, and said, "Go! Go! Just don't spend the money on anything..." Fuu paused to glare at him meaningfully, "..._stupid_."

Like Mugen would.

"Ah," Jin said.

Fuu sent him off with tea and onigiri for the journey, and went back to the kitchen. Where she promptly was grabbed by Tani.

"Was that your _husband_?" Tani demanded, her eyebrows twitching madly as if they couldn't decide if she wanted them to be irate or overjoyed.

"What are you talking about?" Fuu blurted, and then slapped her hand over her mouth, because what other explanation could she give? Jin wasn't her bodyguard anymore. 'Well, see, we haven't known each other very long, but we sleep in the same room and share our money. It's okay, though! We've been through a lot together.' Maybe she could pass him off as her brother, except for the part where they looked nothing alike. "Y-yes. My husband."

Tani poked her in the ribs with a sharp finger. "Why haven't you brought him around before, hmm?"

"Um," Fuu said, smiling nervously. "He works a lot. Very dedicated to protecting his clients."

"A bodyguard, huh?" Tani said, glancing speculatively at the table where Jin had been sitting. "I'd love for him to be my bodyguard."

Jealousy warred with honesty in Fuu's brain until she finally volunteered, "It's not as much fun as you might think."

* * *

Jin went and came back, and everything was fine. Whereas Mugen would have come home penniless with nothing to show for it but porn, Jin arrived with a full money purse and some sticky dango. It made her feel a little bit bad for lying to her boss; Jin would make a good husband. Some day. When he actually wanted to.

Every once in a while, Fuu wondered if he was biding his time with her until he could go see that Shino woman. She always felt bad when she thought it because Jin really was her friend. Only he was much more than just a friend to Shino.

The day after Jin came back didn't start so well. Fuu formed habits quickly, and his absence was long enough for her to forget Jin was there again, so she tripped over him in the dark.

"Hey." Jin wrapped his cold fingers around her ankle.

"Ow," Fuu moaned. She sat up, rubbing her hip. "Aren't you even going to ask if I'm all right?"

"Hm," Jin said, and then rolled over on his mat and went back to sleep. Fuu peered at him in case he was faking it, but if he was she couldn't tell, and it was time to go to work, anyway.

Tani took one look at Fuu's messy hair and baggy eyes, and slyly said, "Your husband came home last night, didn't he?"

"Mm," Fuu said, and gulped down some hot tea.

"When are you thinking of having children?" Tani asked, her eyes glowing. "You'd have such adorable babies."

Fuu choked and spit tea everywhere.

By the end of the day, her kimono was spotted with tea, globs of food, and the snot of a lost little boy who kicked Fuu when she tried to calm him down with a free bun. It wasn't a horrible day, but it was a bad day, and Fuu decided to treat herself to something yummy on the way home from work.

Everything would have worked out just fine if it weren't for that crooked street vendor! Fuu was giving him a piece of her mind with Momo hissing on her shoulder when Jin appeared at her side.

Jin's fingers plucked at her sleeve. "Stop this. It's unseemly."

"Unseemly?" Fuu shouted. "I'll _give_ you unseemly! He sold me rotten manju! Death is too good for the likes of -- oof!"

Instead of quietly listening to her yell as usual, Jin had bent at the knees and tossed her over his shoulder. It felt so much like something that Mugen would do that Fuu went limp and let him carry her away. Mugen, though, he'd probably smack her on the ass and say something perverted. Jin just took her home, set her down on the floor, and said, "Don't draw attention to yourself like that again."

Fuu sniffled. "You're so mean! Don't you care about me at all?"

"I'm not the one you want to ask," Jin said. He briefly touched the hilt of his katana with his fingertips, his bracelet clacking against the scabbard's lacquer. Jin didn't say anything else, but she knew who he meant, the big jerk.

"Hmph," Fuu said, for lack of a better response, and made a face as if she'd eaten an under-ripe persimmon. She glared at him for the rest of the night.

* * *

Whenever she turned to speak to him lately, Jin was always staring off into the distance, looking at nothing. Sometimes she found herself thinking that if Mugen were there with them, he wouldn't let Jin get away with it.

Tonight, he arrived home before she did. Fuu handed him some yakitori in silence, watching him neatly bite the meat from the skewers.

"What's your problem lately, anyway?" she demanded, hands on her hips.

Jin finished eating and put down the bare skewers. "Something happened while I was gone."

"What?" Fuu exclaimed. Secrets? He was keeping secrets? "Tell me!"

He stared at his lap instead of speaking, and it was beginning worry her.

"Word has gotten out that I killed Kariya Kagetoki," Jin said. "Men will be coming for me."

After Mugen had left and Jin was on the mend, he'd told her a little about the man who had killed her father. She had to read between the silences, but if what he said was true, Fuu was pretty sure Jin didn't have any real competition left except for the other stupid jerk she knew.

Fuu felt a weird rush of pride in his skill. "Surely you're not worried."

"Fuu," he said. "If I..." He hadn't replaced his glasses yet, claiming that they were too expensive. Fuu kept thinking she'd get used to seeing his eyes bare like that, but it only reminded her of how everything had changed. And how they were about to change again.

"I want to find Mugen," she said suddenly, knowing it was the right thing to do the moment she opened her mouth. "Will you help me?"

Jin hesitated, his mouth a flat line. "Hmm."

"What I mean is," Fuu said, waving her hands, "I think we should split up. We'll cover more ground that way!"

The area between his eyebrows was all rumpled. "What about --"

"Oh, that," she said airily. "We'll meet up again in Edo in... hmm, six months?"

"Fuu," Jin said. His expression thawed a little. "Six months?"

"Yep," Fuu said, swallowing a sigh. She had chosen Jin as the one to leave her once, and it hurt when he left so easily, without protest. It didn't matter that she knew Jin hated making a fuss. She had chosen Jin because she couldn't make herself choose Mugen. She'd known that if she chose Mugen, she'd lose him forever to Sara, and maybe last time Jin had agreed to leave because he'd known that. If he did, he'd never let on, at least not to her. Maybe to Mugen; she had no idea what those two had said to each other when they were alone, although she suspected they didn't say anything at all. For them, it was pointless unless it involved their swords.

This time, Jin's acceptance didn't hurt as much. This time, it felt like old friends making plans; she was sure he'd be waiting for her six months from now. Her father hadn't forgotten her, and neither would Jin.

"All right," Jin said. "Edo it is."

"If you see him," Fuu said.

Jin nodded.

Fuu narrowed her eyes. "If you see him first, I want you to kick him for me."

"Kick?" Jin asked. His eyebrow crept up.

"Yeah! Or better yet," Fuu said. She jumped up and gestured with her fist. "Punch him right in the face!"

Jin looked at her fist and stood, stepping closer. "If you see him before I do," he said, closing his hands around hers. The unexpected touch made her heart shudder sideways, and she suddenly remembered that they were alone in their room. Jin opened her fist, curling her fingers back down and folding her thumb over them. "Hit him like this, otherwise you'll break your thumb."

Fuu looked at her fist and beamed.


End file.
